Innovation

To boldly go where no start-up has gone before

THE motto of the Starfleet Academy, the nursery of future leaders and humanitarians in the fictional universe of Star Trek, was "Ex astris, scientia". Peter Diamandis, an entrepreneur who set up the X-Prize Foundation to spur innovators into tackling grand technological challenges, has turned the credo around. He wants to use knowledge to reach for the stars—both literally, by promoting private human spaceflight, a cause particularly dear to Mr Diamandis, and figuratively. Together with fellow techno-utopian Ray Kurzweil, he created what he calls “a Starfleet Academy for the world's biggest challenges”.

Founded in 2009, Singularity University is based at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and inspired by Mr Kurzweil's idea of technological singularity, an innovation (like artificial superintelligence) which will one day completely upend the way the world works. Its ten-week graduate program attracts serial entrepreneurs, engineers, fighter pilots, roboticists and political advisers. Their rather ambitious study goal is to get an inkling of the most rapidly-advancing technologies, and then to figure out how they can help change the world—or, more specifically, improve the lives of one billion people in the next decade.

Star faculty members include Astro Teller, the head of innovation at Google, and Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet. They are joined by a bevy of experts in what Mr Diamandis refers to as “exponentially growing technologies”: nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, brain-machine interfaces, synthetic biology and the like. Field trips take students to see the Valley's hottest new thing. Itineraries have included the headquarters of Tesla Motors, a maker of electric sports cars, Willow Garage, a lab which develops personal robotics, 3D printing centers, or the home of Google's self-driving car. It is, in effect, a summer camp for geeks, albeit ones who will not blink when they tell you they intend to change the world.

On August 25th the third graduating class presented ten business proposals to a crowd of their professors, angel investors and tech grandees, a couple of hundred in all. Each presentation lasted ten minutes, was long on ambition and excruciatingly short on detail—hardly surprising given that the teams had just five weeks to come up with their ideas.

One of the most eye-catching projects was also the furthest along in its development. The pitch featured a video of a small robotic “quadrocopter”, hovering gracefully to an astral soundtrack. The goal of the company, called Matternet, is to use such robots to transport drugs and medical testing kits in regions without reliable roads. The current prototype is capable of carrying 2kg over a distance of 10km; the team envisions networks of ground stations, where the devices could recharge on their way to more inaccessible destinations. The government of the Dominican Republic has already agreed to work with Matternet for a field test in that country. Matternet's ultimate goal is to build an unmanned aerial vehicles capable of carrying not just medicines but people between villages; in effect a pilotless electric helicopter.

Another initiative, called AstroTrash, is aiming even higher. It hopes to use Earth-based lasers to clear space junk out of the path of satellites. The proposers, who includes Franz Gayl, a civilian science-and-technology adviser to the Pentagon, explains that the lasers would slow the debris down to the point where they fall out of lower-Earth orbit and vaporise in the Earth's atmosphere on re-entry. The idea is not entirely novel; it was aired in March by NASA scientists. And it faces formidable technological hurdles—it is far from clear whether lasers can actually pass through the Earth's atmosphere retaining enough oomph to nudge orbital flotsam in any meaningful way. Perhaps even more daunting is the prickly diplomatic issue of the device's potential use in space warfare.

More down-to-Earth projects included Corruption Tracker, a mobile platform for reporting corruption, Ignisolar, which already managed to construct a prototype of a cheap, flexible and lightweight solar panel, and Senstore, which helps the developer community build and commercialise prototype health sensors.

All teams hope to turn their projects into start-ups. In most cases, though, only a few members will continue working on the ideas full-time; the rest have jobs or PhDs to get back to. That does not mean that the projects will fizzle—at least if the first two classes, no less vaultingly ambitious than the current crop, are any guide. Many projects have faded from view but a handful is slowly coming to fruition. Several start-ups are already up and running and a few of those have secured seed financing. One company which recently found investors, BioMine, exploits existing mining technologies to harvest valuable metals from electronic waste; another, H2020, received cash from the Chilean government which wants to use their mobile platform to crowdsource information on the availability and quality of water in slums.

But perhaps the biggest success so far, judging by the excited chatter of this year's hopefuls, is a company called GetAround. It is a peer-to-peer car-rental service borne out of the academy's inaugural class. Its big idea is to get people to give up the cherished idea of owning a car—and embrace a future of autonomous, zero-emissions vehicles that will be summoned and driven by the iPhones of the future. Given the deep attachment many citizens of rich and, increasingly, developing countries feel to automobiles, the project's aim is indeed ambitious, though it remains unclear how it would dramatically improve the lot of one billion people. The same could be said for most other proposals. Ultimately, however, only time will tell whether Mr Diamandis's version of the Starfleet Academy will yield results any less fictional than its cinematic precursor.

Correction: An earlier version of this blog post wrongly suggested that Peter Diamandis is a billionaire. This has been corrected.

Readers' comments

It has been great to follow the 10 weeks GSP-11 through Twitter where the hashtag #singularityu put all action together - mainly done by students, most grateful to @DrLucyRogers, whom I backed up (as I myself couldn't go this time due to the financial challenge - time to come!) and enjoyed reading her tweets.

Looking forward to actions over the course of the coming weeks and months. So great to be involved in the connected way the Web provides even though physical attendance not this time.

Cheers to all and congratulations for The Economist to bring it to Europe's press. I predict within this year we will have an article in major German magazines and business newspapers to be found.

"a summer camp for geeks, albeit ones who will not blink when they tell you they intend to change the world."

They not only 'intend', many have already 'done'. When it comes to innovation you don't 'blink' and whither, you tackle the issue head-on knowing that it can be beat. Someone is going to solve the problem, why not you?

Hello L.B., this was a very interesting article, especially since you featured H2020; they were one of the first participants in the Start-Up Chile program which has funded 112 startups in less than one year with taking equity from any of them. I am interested in getting in touch with you with regards to another possible story– would it be possible for you to email me at: info@startupchile.org? Thank you in advance!

Matternet plans to have solar recharging stations along the way. Each recharging station introduces a latency delaying the flow of UAVs. Solar powered "power beaming" recharging stations can be place along the route enabling in air recharging.
Cheers,
Bert Murraywww.lhdev.com